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You remember it last from punk rock and post-rock concerts in the mid-1990s and later, house music on dance floors in the late 1990s. Fugazi. Henry Rollins. Throwing Muses. The Mekons. Modest Mouse. Joe Claussell, Danny Tenaglia, Basement Jaxx, The Chemical Brothers. In every one of these memories, the scraps you have left are body parts. Beads of sweat on a boy’s neck. Water bottles finding their way into your open hand when you’re parched. Fingers curling and uncurling. A fist risen in rebellious ecstasy, a torso moving from side to side, legs unseen. Feet in shoes, feet bare, on a dark sticky floor full of legs communing, legs intimately close, a world of legs with no bodies and no heads, a world beneath, as when you kneel to catch your breath at the club or at a political rally, to give your legs a rest momentarily, because your legs aren’t what they used to be when you went to punk rock concerts without telling your parents. And you are alone now, not in a sea of heads and faces, expressions you try to read and words you try to discern in the melee, bodies forgotten because they are in shadow. When you kneel, you’re like a child, a small person, perspective altered. Now your world is darker, not quieter but more muffled, and in a forest of straight, rooted limbs. And like a child in the woods, you imagine weaving between thighs and calves (the muscles), clinging to knees and falling on people’s feet. From there, the lights are higher, blinking above you, a disco ball and stage lights that turn into floodlights and signs. One sign moves above the sea of heads in the dark sky – it says “Love SG” and as the sequin of lights blink off one by one, another sequence turns on which asks you to vote in neon.

When you find your way back up to where the adults are, waves of voices ripple through the crowd. You cannot see where the crowd begins and where it ends. There is too much here for your camera to capture and still you push your arm up, get on tip-toes and holding your camera you click several times. It shows you what you cannot see – heads and bodies. People and beyond them, more people. But it cannot show you what you feel – rapture. Just behind you, you see an old man who must be in his eighties, about 5ft tall, in slippers, pants and a shirt, standing with lips pursed, his gaze steady. He never looks at you, even though you stare. He seems frail, but that is because you overestimate your strength. You have an urge to call him ‘grandfather’. You do it inside and you send him love for no reason whatsoever.

Next to you, a man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair starts chatting to you. He laughs, he nods his head tentatively, uncertainly. He is sure of a win for the party, he wishes for a win, he is sure, but it is anyone’s guess. Guesses take the force of conviction. And another man, also in his fifties, joins in. This other man shakes his head…”they think we’re stupid. They treat us like we can’t think,” he says. He shakes his head again, disappointment, anger and defiance moving like light and shadow across his face. You feel their conviction and desire like it is a thing being birthed, a thing that gestates for four or five years, and emerges for a short-lived and glorious life. A lepidoptera with an even shorter life span – ten day, a few weeks. They’re handsome you think, and you wonder about their lives – where do they live? What do they do? Who do they love? What do they wish?

In front of them, four younger guys, to you they look like boys, but they must be young men. You are not in their circle but you are just at its periphery and you feel the intimacy of what they have created – intimacy you would not have felt had you stood behind them at the cinema to buy tickets for some summer blockbuster movie you will not remember. Intimacy that would have been sorely absent if you and they were in line in some neon-lit mall purchasing a product – a thing you think will mitigate the frustration but which only serves to distract you. It’s here and now you remember the dance floor and the punk concerts. They are not punk kids. That is not it. It is the sweat on the boy’s neck and the way the flood lights cast his profile in sharp relief – the way this brings him closer to you than any other circumstance might have. You envy them their intimacy and yet, you partake in it quietly because here you can. Because here, no one cares. This is punk. When you thrust your fists in the air and shout and whistle again, using your language to speak the words ‘people’ and ‘power’, they look back at you and nod their heads and smile. Just like that, their circle opens and you are, if only for a split-second, invited in.

This much is certain, for here, and for now, exclusion is not in anyone’s interest.

When the party’s members begin to speak in the various dialects, the crowd erupts again. To you, these words are sounds and rhythms, but you crave comprehension. You touch the shoulder of the boy with a crew cut and beads of sweat on his neck to ask what was just said. He leans in towards you, breaking his circle while his friends smile at me and tells me – they’re talking about the party in power, they’re telling us about the contradictory stances on policies. In the safety of this numberless crowd, you have the equanimity and grace to understand that people in power remain in power through a steady campaign of intimidation, carried out so deftly and with such steady persistence, that it often goes unseen. The older uncles lean in too, and for a moment, you all commune – you, the men in their 50s, the boys. And in your wildly uncontrolled inner world, you embrace them. This is punk, you think. Sweat commingling and feelings of love as you contemplate threats.

And from the rally, you hear a call for change, a call you’ve heard before. You are implored to participate and you are comforted and told not to fear the powers that be. The powers that be. A term you’ve used often but which means nothing. A power that has been for so long, it has ceased becoming. It has ceased creating, it has ceased evolving. You swell with pride and you are filled with feeling. It is almost erotic because you feel free. For one moment in time, flood-lit and sweating, you feel truly free. You realise you’ve been asking permission for as long as you’ve lived in this country and it has become such a habit that you forget you are doing it. This explains your outbursts. You ask and act, when what you want to do is act from a place of pure love. You love to love, you want to love and you want to be a part of something that creates the change you desire with patience and tenderness. You are exhausted by resisting. You long to go downstream, but you fear the stream and so you’ve carved out a world so specific to your own rendition of reality that it must necessarily exclude these larger, more complex, ambiguous pieces. You are a part of it, yet apart.

So you protect yourself.

You know this ecstasy you feel is a little bit of an illusion – that in the sea of strangers, there will be people along a spectrum, unwilling to embrace you, particular about their grievances, alienated from you or by you. You know that with where this society stands at this current point in time, you are not an unhinged piece, but a new one, though well-worn, which they’re learning to accept. You realise that when the party members tell rousing stories of their biographies, yours will not work quite as well. You were not born here, but you feel their pain. You are not from here. And yet, here you are. Your biography continually evades capture. And even this, this struggle to craft a narrative that will make sense, begins to release its grip on you. This feeling won’t last long, so you relish it. You fantasize about the prospect of all of these stories enmeshing, intermingling, differences encountering differences, and people in rooms, on streets, at dawn, in the middle of the night, co-creating a ‘now’ that they so intensely desire. Desire that finds common ground, because love surely must, you think. Ideas interject and collide, but love must meet, must lose its need to assert itself, must permit the encounter at least.You have an urge to rouse the masses. It takes over. Your story is about being adrift and not quite fitting in. But this drama requires a character who is willing to be reeled in, to cast anchor and to love. You fall in love and you feel alien, out of body. But the cognitive dissonance gives in to resonance. This is punk, you think.

And before you leave, tired and too happy to string your words together, you see a face in the crowd just behind you. He is wearing a baseball cap and grinning. You grin back and then realize, you know him. He used to own the apartment you now live in. He recognizes you and you both do a double-take. You know that there must be at least 50,000 people here. You have not seen this man in over a year. Here he is. You reach out to shake his hand, because you are gobsmacked. He holds yours tightly and shakes it and says, “we meet here on common ground…it’s good to know you’ve taken over my votes too.” And again, you think, 50,000 people? Here you are, and here he is. And you both share(d) a home in common. A place you both inhabit(ed), a place you both love(d) and live(d) in; sleepless nights and possible fights. Rooms in which you felt alone and in which you embraced someone.And here you are, again. On common ground.

A few weeks ago, on a bright, sunny morning, a sunbird (nectariniidae or small passerine birds), yellow-breasted with a greenish back and purple-brown wings, flew through the window of our apartment, perched itself atop the stack of books on our coffee table, regarded the room for a moment and then flew out.

I was sitting at our work table and had a front-seat view to this marvelous and entirely inexplicable event. I resisted the urge to gasp or make any sound and, as you might see in a comic book or a cartoon for children, quickly covered my mouth with both hands.

That was the second instance of a visit that morning. Earlier, I was folding the laundry in the bedroom when a sunbird flew to the windowsill, perched there awhile and then flew away.

In both instances, I didn’t sense anything like fear, or disorientation.

Why would a sunbird fly right into your apartment and sit on your books?

We’re guilty of anthropomorphizing the birds, we admit. This is because about four months ago, a sunbird decided to build a nest on the hanging, arching foliage of a lipstick plant (Aeschynanthus evergreen subtropical plants in the family Gesneriaceae) hanging not far from the front door of my in-laws’ house. Their nests are lovely things. They are made on what seems to be a fragile vine and look to me like an almond-shaped eye, tilted vertically. With pointed ends, the hollow inside which they lay their eggs is a wondrous example of a warm cocoon.

We named her Mallika (the Tamil name for the jasmine flower, our favourite, and the flower of the gods in Hinduism). Whenever we visited, most often in the evening, she was done with her tasks for the day and sat in the nest, plump and utterly still. She was undisturbed by our goings and comings, the lights turning on and off at the drive-way and even by our irrepressible desire to stealthily walk by, stand not too far away and simply look at her. Sunbirds pollinate lipstick plants, so the choice was obvious and only natural. Nonetheless, it struck us as remarkable that she felt safe being so close to humans. We are, I suppose, less of a threat than the koel, the mynah, the oriole.

Mallika went on to give birth to three chicks. Our in-laws told us that a couple of days after this, they were about to head out in their car when these three sunbirds, Mallika’s offspring, appeared and began fluttering around their heads, twittering with great energy. They said it felt like they had come to say good bye. Mallika still came by and spent some evenings in that cocoon, quiet and still. We joked that it must be handful managing three young ones and that she probably came here to rest.

We got rather carried away with the story-telling. With this lovely gestation and birthing experience, we imagined Mallika letting her sister or friend know that this was a perfect spot in which to nest. We imagined another sunbird arriving after Mallika’s departure.

And of course, it happened. A new sunbird has arrived, the nest has been spruced up and of course, we’ve named her again. She is Manjula.

We’ve also bought a lipstick plant.

We’ve rescued all kinds of bizarre creatures from our house, most often late in the evening or at night, when we’ve only got the two standing lamps on. Yes, moths (often brown like bark, but also white as clouds), but also cicadas; once, a spider-moth, several wasps, a praying mantis and a grasshopper. In every instance, there is disorientation and sometimes, sadly, an injury. These are instances of short-lived lives; creatures seeking succor, desperate for the light, always drawn to it, creatures coming to a place to die. This is how it is: on a wall, just resting, on a wall, still, death around the corner. If they are on the ceiling, we leave them alone, knowing that the next morning we’ll find them on the floor, somewhere behind the couch or under the side table.

Sometimes, with the angrier ones (angry because they are on the defensive), rescue is difficult. So we have to capture them in tupperware, lightly place the cover and give it a gentle shake so that they’re a bit dizzy. Then, when they’re not sure where they are or what’s going on, we release them, usually into the bushes or onto a lush, healthy plant.

The most bizarre rescue (and possibly the most educational for me) was when we found a Banded Malayan coral snake near the door of another apartment in our small enclave. It was an infant, indistinguishable from a worm. But a worm is a worm and we thought it best to move it to the mud, grass and away from people’s feet and shoes.

But as it turned out, the worm was a coral snake. The tupperware exercise was nearly futile. A piece of paper to edge it into the tupperware also did not work and a twig, when dealing with something so slender and delicate, can be fatal.

Was it a newborn? Even then, the defensive instinct was perfectly operational. The coral snake flipped, belly-upped and suddenly, there it was: the luminous yellow and black stripes and the orange “head” with a black dot, signifying the eye. A new snake, a new version, a new avatar. This was its threatening posture: these colours were meant to evoke fear and also disorientation (the tail was now the head). This twisting, writhing dance continued for a while, so that it felt like an optical illusion: first a dull brown, worm-like snake, then a banded, bright, poisonous snake, back and forth.

It took a while, the neighbours got involved, people from upstairs peered down and watched and it all turned into a bit of an event.

We eventually managed to get it into the tupperware, where it continued to writhe.This moment in time, from capture to release, is a time in which I always feel a strange well of love. I have no way to tell this thing writhing or trembling inside this transparent box with the lid only lightly on (to let air in) that this is not an execution, but a rescue. Release is always a lovely moment. Of course, we have no idea what happens after that. We could very well be delaying an imminent death, or releasing them into the clutches of a more dangerous world, a predatory realm. We know all this. But this is how it is. Better that, than be trampled on, flicked, sprayed on with a chemical, or be stamped out with a rolled up newspaper by a human hand.

The snake was released into a wide, open field. We saw it hesitate and then move quickly through the undergrowth.

Walking without purpose two days ago, I wandered into Art Plural Gallery on Armenian Street, remembering that the last time I wandered in, I discovered Fabienne Verdier and sat quietly at the sprawling upper floor of the gallery drinking in her vast canvases of calligraphy and abstract brush strokes generated with a fat brush the width of a large bucket rigged onto bicycle handles. A brush that I imagine looks like the stumpy tail of a large beast.

This time I discovered the works of Chun Kwang Young and once again, confronted with his works, I drifted back and forth, from one side to the other, back and forth again, as though in a trance, performing a walking meditation on an invisible grid on the gallery’s cement floor.

Chun Kwang Young began the series called “Aggregations” in 1995. It is a network of triangles, wrapped in mulberry paper. Known as hanji, mulberry paper is used in almost every aspect of daily Korean life: for wallpaper, window shades, for books and as wrapping for herbs and vegetables. It has a hardy, imperishable quality. The hanji used in Aggregations have fragments of text, much of it from schools books, exercise books etc. These jagged triangles (equilateral, isosceles and so on) sit side by side, are pushed into claustrophobic juxtapositions creating an almost forced harmony on the canvas (they must be side by side, whether it pleases them or not). They jut out, they give in and sink into the canvas, they push their way out again. Each piece seems alive.

The work bristles. From up close, texts seem to be in dialogue or in mid-debate, so that contestation and contradiction overwhelm the viewer. From a good distance, Aggregation 07-D132 (a name that makes me think of obscure solar systems, nebulae, mathematical equations) looks like a dense, concrete jungle bathed in the ocher hues of sunset. And because we’re in Singapore, I found myself imagining the city on this canvas also veiled in a smoky haze, so that the sharp, clear quality of light in the evening as the sun descends, is muddied and diluted, the colours spreading, choking instead of inspiring awe.

Writing is a funny business. Hours of researching on a flower, a type of food, or a street, is often condensed into a line, or a paragraph at most. The labour that goes into writing is often unseen.

With this sort of work, the labour is unmistakably evident. Speaking to the gallery staff, I was told that Chun maps where these three-dimensional foam triangles wrapped in hanji will be situated on the canvas. There is a skeletal structure, an outline. After that, these pieces are individually wrapped, painted and then glued on the canvas following the “map” the artist pre-sketches on the blank canvas.

It is impossible to guess how many hanji triangles are on each canvas (each piece is anywhere from 3cm x 5cm to 5cm x 7cm and the dimensions of Aggregations 07-D132 is 250cm x 205cm). As they say, “do the maths”. The labour itself overwhelms and were I able to read the textual fragments, I imagine hours going by as bizarre narratives emerge in one’s mind.

Up close, it also looks like an array of miniature gifts wrapped in paper and string. I had the desire to reach for one, to tug it out of the canvas and unwrap it. But all that there is to see, is on the wrapping itself. Inside, there is emptiness, there is matter, but no substance to decipher.

The others in the series, like Aggregation 10 – SE031 BLUE (63 x 131 cm, 2010, the blue-hued photo in this post) do not use hanji from textbooks. As many have already observed, they look like a series of lunar landscapes, portraits of the moon, planets juxtaposed, the dusty trail of a bleak comet streaking across the large face of Saturn or the moon (the surfaces are almost always grey, so one does not think of Mars or Jupiter).

Sometimes, you wander on streets, or you go somewhere, get things done, see someone, all of the purpose taking the possibility of chance out of your meandering.

And sometimes, you do intentionally enter a space, but within its vast floors and walls, you are momentarily outside time and inside someone else’s realm.

Chun Kwang Young’s work left me gobsmacked and I shall return to see it.

Coffee…conversation…soy milk with blueberries…toast…work…sunshine…fighter jets and rumbling thunder…letter to KJ…poetry by BPK…poetry and pausing…poetry and stillness…car horn and laughing thrush…cicada and gurgling chirping of myna…cold shower…errands…poetry.